make the most of their more liberal opportunities, and so hasten the time when our work may be criticised as that of human beings, and neither as that of colored women nor as that of women.
The day is coming when we shall not
"Be satisfied with praise
Which men give women when they judge a book—
Not as mere work, but as mere woman's work,
Expressing the comparative respect
which means the absolute scorn."
Even now we have some among us for whom it is not meet to intimate an apology, women whose work speaks for itself and has neither sex nor complexion.
It is necessary only to mention Edmonia Lewis, in whose veins courses the blood of the despised race, and whose genius and triumphant career are universally conceded, to instance the possibilities of Afro-American womanhood. Many others there are, also, whose successes in educational, professional, industrial and literary pursuits have been chronicled by our author, and still others, no doubt, whose achievements, though equally praiseworthy, have been unintentionally omitted. It is most fitting that one whose early struggles for education and a higher development were nobly supplemented by the self-sacrificing efforts of a loving mother should himself become the champion of that mother's sex, and especially of the numbers just entering the light studiously shut out from her longing eyes.
Such a son of such a mother is Lawson Andrew Scruggs, born in Bedford county, Virginia, January 15,
